The present invention relates in general to disposable containers employed in hospitals for disposing of medical wastes and more specifically to such a container suitable for use in the patient's room in a hospital into which medical instruments and materials employed in treating the patient in the patient's room can be safely stored prior to disposal and subsequently disposed of in a secure and economical manner.
Various types of containers have been developed heretofore for receiving medical wastes in hospital surgery and treatment rooms which are intended to protect the doctor, nurse or other hospital personnel from injuring themselves during the disposal procedure. It is very important that used medical instruments, such as surgical sharps, needles and syringes, or the like, be disposed of in a hospital environment in such a way that no one receives a scratch or puncture and the attendant exposure to contamination. Examples of disposable containers for use in surgical room environments are disclosed in prior Pat. Nos. 4,494,652 entitled "Container For Sharps"; 4,552,280 entitled "Container For Waste Products; 4,453,648 entitled "Disposal Bin"; 4,580,688 entitled "Container Having Plural Closures"; and Pat. application Ser. No. 838,296 filed Mar. 10, 1986 entitled "Rigid Disposable Container For Holding and Dispensing of Used Medical Sharps and Other Medical-Surgical Materials."
Currently, it is still common practice to dispose of medical materials in a patent's room by simply depositing the same in a standard type of wastebasket or the materials or instruments are removed and disposed of at some distant location. It is desirable to have a disposable container which by its appearance, construction and mode of operation can be utilized in the environment of a patient's room so that the doctor, nurse or other hospital personnel treating a patient in the patient's room can quickly and simply dispose of the medical instrument, sharp or other medical material in a safe and secure manner into a container which stores the same until such time as the container is sufficiently filed, or the patient is released from the hospital, so that the container can then be securely sealed and disposed of. Examples of commercially available disposable containers used in hospital patient rooms heretofore are the "SHARPS-A-GATOR" (a trademark of Devon Industries, Inc., Chatsworth, CA) sharp collection and disposal system and the "Roll-A-Way" (a trademark of Premium Plastics, Inc., Chicago, Ill.) sharps disposal system. These products have dual closure features including a top, lockable closure flap, which is closed completely only once just before disposal, and additional barrier means below the flap which are intended to allow entry of medical instruments and waste while keeping the patients, doctors or nurses from entering the container body. These additional barriers have comprised bendable flaps which cover a portion of the container inlet, rotating paddle wheels and normally closed pivoted flappers gravity biased to a normally closed position.
It would be desirable to provide such disposable containers with stationary barrier means which do not have to bend, pivot or rotate to allow entry of the disposed medical instrument and/or waste but still prevent manual entry into the container body. Further, it would be desirable to have such a container where the contained instruments and/or waste will not fall out if the container is inverted prior to closure of the locking closure flap. It would also be desirable to have such a container where a closure arrangement of a given size could be easily adoptable to fit upon container bodies of differing size to accommodate different volumes of stored medical instruments and/or waste for subsequent disposal thereof.